1,800 aged care beds lost this financial year, but more than 2,900 come online

News of aged care homes closing has captured the headlines in recent weeks, but there is still a steady stream of aged care homes being built – in the last 10 months, the capacity of Australia’s residential aged care system has increased by 1,100 beds.

Providers such as Opal HealthCare and Signature Care are building larger homes to meet the inevitable demand that will come from Australia’s ageing population.

Late last year, Aged Care Minister Anika Wells said that by 2040, there will be around 350,000 aged care residents. That would mean an additional 150,000 aged care beds will need to be added to the system in only 18 years – or more than 8,000 beds per year.

That’s unlikely to happen based on current numbers. Last year, there was just over $1 billion of construction work on new aged care developments – at $350,000 a bed, that’s only around 3,000 new beds.

However, new beds are being added to the system.

Department of Health and Aged Care data shows that between 1 July 2022 and 28 April 2023:

• 1,822 residential aged care beds went offline, but
• 2,926 new aged care beds opened.

That makes a net gain of more than 1,100 beds over the 10-month period.

The data also tells us that aged care homes are getting larger – the higher number of beds was delivered in a smaller number of homes.

Between 1 July 2022 and 28 April 2023:

• 32 aged care homes closed (8 in Victoria, 21 in New South Wales, 2 in Queensland and 1 in South Australia), and
• 28 aged care homes opened (7 in NSW, 9 in Victoria, 7 in Queensland, 3 in Western Australia and 1 each in South Australia and Tasmania).